Which CMS to Use?

I recently was asked the age old question “what CMS is the best?”. So I asked back “What will the CMS be used for?”, and of course that wasn’t specifically known. This post is not a complete post. It is here to jot down findings and notes about CMS’s. Wordpress and Exponent CMS are the only two CMS’ I have tried for more than 5 minutes. I tried Exponent and WordPress in 2007 and have not given Exponent another chance. Since then Joomla and Drupal have become the clear competition (in terms of popularity) for WordPress. So these three will be reviewed. At the time of this post creation, WordPress is beating both in terms of Google Searches.

WordPress (blue), Drupal (red), Joomla (yellow)

In the following lists, “Users” are people who use the CMS to put out content. “Developers” are people who set up and/or customize the CMS for someone else to use. And if you haven’t noticed, these are only comparing PHP open source CMS’.

WordPress

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Very easy to pick up and learn for new users.

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Forums have many complaints from developers.

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Drupal

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Easy for developers to pick up and learn

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Not user friendly. Difficult for new users to pick up and learn.

No WYSIWYG editor.

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Joomla

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Easy to use for Developers, Designers, and Users

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Not as User-Friendly as WordPress.

Not as powerful as Drupal.

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Conclusion

In conclusion from the web, it seems that WordPress is best for clients you want to impress, Drupal is best if you have a website with many features, Joomla is best if … you need something easier to use than Drupal, but more customizable than WordPress? In my own narrow opinion, WordPress has a large community creating plugins to keep you from straying to Drupal. These plugins offer calendars, embedded video, columns, galleries, etc. One thing that I think I’ve seen in Drupal that WordPress does not natively support (and did not find a plugin yet) is to edit different parts of a page. For example if you wanted to have a template where you needed to edit some text on the left sidebar, the top section, and the main content, you would have trouble doing this in WordPress. I’m still doing research on how easy it would be in Drupal or Joomla. The problem for me is that the user interface of Joomla and Drupal looks like it’s meant for IT personnel. However, the people I’m creating a CMS for are business and secretarial personnel. Decide for yourself and try a demo of each one and more at opensourcecms.com.